Summer Lighting Ideas to Brighten Your Backyard

Longer evenings, summer holidays, and family gatherings are only a few reasons to brighten your backyard after the sun goes down. Installing a lighting scheme into your backyard can transform your outdoor dining, pool area, garden beds, and more! Regardless of your landscape lighting goal, we’ve got some summer lighting ideas to improve the ambiance, safety, and functionality of your backyard space.

Outdoor Audio

Adding an outdoor audio system to your backyard gives you many new opportunities to enjoy your space. Pair your outdoor audio with your TV and watch a movie under the stars, host a karaoke night, and stream your favorite playlists. At Mobile Illumination we understand that you want to keep your beautiful landscape front and center, so we discreetly install your outdoor audio system into your surroundings. Click here to learn more about our Sonarray outdoor audio landscape series and discover why Sonarray is the industry leader in outdoor sound systems.

Summer Lighting Ideas For Your Dining and Lounging Areas

Outdoor kitchens, bars, and grilling areas are some of the best features of your backyard space. With many different styles and customizations, incorporating unique architectural design elements can spice up your space. Try an antique chandelier hung from a tree above your outdoor dining area. Wall sconces and wall lights add broad visibility to your lounge area and prevent tripping hazards. Depending on your activity, you can customize the lights for a warm, subtle glow or cool hues for maximum illumination. Considering  Southern California has frequent heat waves, installing an outdoor ceiling fan with gorgeous light fixtures will deliver both task and ambient lighting to your seating area.

Lighting Ideas for Your Fire Pit Area

Gathering around the fire pit is cozy, relaxing, and extends your enjoyment for hours after dark. When lighting your fire pit, the goal is to enable everyone to navigate around the fire with ease and safety. Most fire pits are  located in a dark area of a backyard. Adding path lights ensures safety when walking to and from the fire. Start by illuminating the path from your home to the fire pit, and then see if more visibility is needed. If you have a sitting wall or permanent fire pit, you can install under cap lighting directly under the edges. Under cap lighting shines downward, providing enough light to prevent bumping into or tripping over the corners of your sitting wall or firepit.

Add Charm to Your Retaining Wall

Many backyards include some type of retaining wall. Why not spruce it up a bit? Integrating lighting to a wall surrounding the perimeter of your backyard serves many functions such as illuminating any dark holes near the edges, providing added security from intruders, and creating an attractive backdrop for nighttime gatherings. Wash lights are the way to go! Wash lights sit low to the ground and cast a wide spectrum of light across the hardscape. Wash lighting illuminates your backyard while highlighting the beauty of the hardscape and surrounding features that would otherwise be lost when the sun goes down.

Embellish Your Trees

If you are one of those lucky homeowners who has mature trees in your yard, you have the perfect opportunity to add drama to your evening landscape. Choosing the right lighting technique depends on the different features you want to highlight such as the canopy, lower branches, tree trunk, or the entire silhouette. One option is to mount up lights at the base of your tree to accentuate the tree bark and canopy, using a wide beam will do a great job at achieving depth and texture. Directional lights are versatile and can be adjusted to illuminate the trees from different angles. In-grade lights (well lights) are placed right into your lawn, they are low profile and allow you to light the tree from the lowest possible point. In-grade lights are perfect for lighting trees that are small or low to the ground.

Illuminate You Pool and Jacuzzi

Outdoor pools and Jacuzzis are known to ease the stresses of the day and are typically the highlight of picnics and gatherings. If you’ve ever taken advantage of these water features after dark, you have experienced the spa-like relaxation that is priceless. There are ways to illuminate your pool or Jacuzzi to create a soothing ambiance with visibility for safe maneuvering. If you have a pool deck, then in-ground lights are a great option and so are above-ground directional lights. High-end tiki torches are another wonderful way to naturally illuminate your pool area. Professional grade tiki torches are crafted of high-quality brass and copper and are hard-wired into your landscape. Floating pool lights are whimsical and gorgeous and with so many designs and sizes to choose from, you can easily personalize your space. 

Bring Attention to Outdoor Focal Points

Many backyards have attractive landscape focal points like columns, sculptures, statues, and gardens. Well lights can be placed at the base of a column, statue, or other feature to create a dramatic effect. If you want to use light to create a shadow behind your focal point, try strategically placing your light fixture at the base and off to the side to get your desired effect. Cattail lights can add a unique dimension to gardens and vegetation, but also look great anywhere they are placed. Cattail lighting is available in a range of styles, all being sleek and easily able to integrate into your natural landscape features.

Produce Visible Walkways

Your backyard may have multiple features, it’s important to guide your guests through your outdoor living spaces with pathway lighting. The goal is to create a safe space to walk around with ease at night. There are many stylish ways to achieve this depending on your property’s layout. The most common types of walkway lights are bollard lights, flush lights, downlights, and garden lights.

Are you ready to start your backyard lighting project? At Mobile Illumination, our design experts use a multitude of lighting techniques to achieve a layered effect providing safety and aesthetics. Click here to schedule your design consultation!

Want to see more deck lighting tips? Check out our photo gallery!